Foil
by Summerslightning
Summary: On the way back from a secret past-midnight trip to the kitchens, Anna finds Elsa's door unlocked and open.


Anna wakes deep in the night with an itch between her eyebrows and restless feet. Her bedroom's cold. The fireplace in the corner bares blunt black teeth and dead coals, and she swings her legs over the edge of the bed and sits up, stretching, yawning. Something in her head goes _pop_. All around her the castle leans down quiet. She worries her fingers together, listening for a footstep, a creaking stair. Her window's a triangle of moonlight and falling snow, and she counts the flakes melting on the glass until the grandfather clock downstairs rolls over the hour. The distant dings tell her it's three in the morning.

She throws off the sheets and hurries on her tiptoes to the window. She looks out over Arendelle. The streetlamps are blurry orange globes against the snow, the streets blurred bars of white between the steepled houses. The banner over the gates is frozen solid. Slipping down the sky now, the moon's eye shimmers and ripples on the fjord. Two weeks ago that was frozen solid too, one big sheet of ice, but spring's coming fast and the ice couldn't stay. The cutters trimmed away some—she watched them do it, standing just where she is now—and the sun took the rest. It won't freeze again, not all the way. And maybe, Anna thinks, watching the white stuff lump into little soggy drifts against the windowsill, this is the last snowfall of the season. She hopes so. She's been looking for the crocuses for almost a month!

The floor's frigid. Wincing, she half-dances back to her bedside and even sits down, but she's not tired anymore. No small wonder why: beneath the moon and over the snow the sky's awash with ribbons of shimmery color, licks of lime and bright, showy purple. She watches them a while, kicking her feet, smiling. She's never been able to drowse under the aurora, not since she can remember. It's too beautiful to sacrifice for sleep, better than any dreams she's ever had… except maybe the ones where Elsa still talks to her. Really _talks _to her.

Elsa…

Anna bites her lip. She wonders if Elsa's awake now, the same as her. Is she looking out her window too, watching the aurora wind its serpentine scales down toward the horizon? Probably not—Elsa's smart and super mature, she'd never be up so late.

(Or would she? Anna kicks her feet a little harder.)

Thing is, Anna doesn't know. She sees her sister every day at dinner, but always from the opposite end of a table. They don't talk, not much, at least not about anything interesting. Mama and Papa sit between them and how much can you say to your sister with your parents listening the whole time? Anna's tried getting Elsa away, on her own, in private: she's blurted out, "Wanna go on a walk after dinner?" more than once, or asked if maybe Elsa was doing anything the next day, the next week. The next month, even? How about after because I can wait, Elsa, I can, I will, if only you'd just—

Elsa's so busy. Mama and Papa say as much all the time, cutting in before Elsa can open her own mouth. "She's going to be queen one day," Papa's fond of reminding the table. "She has studying to do, Anna—and you should study your lessons too, because when she's queen she'll need your help." And Elsa's eyes go wide and a little panicked every time, hearing that: Anna sees it, sees how her sister shrinks back in her chair and ducks her head and looks everywhere but at Anna, and Anna never tries to suggest studying together for fear of what Elsa might say.

The snowfall's tapering. Bright pink in spurts now, the aurora slides its sinuous length away and back again, and Anna's stomach turns over, nibbling on itself. She sighs. Once when she was little she choked on a turnip. "You turned blue," Mama said, "and we were scared until you got it down," and ever since then Anna's kept away from turnips and their parsnippy cousins too, just in case. Last night's dinner was turnip soup, complete with chunks. She'd eaten cautiously, navigating her spoon amongst those chunks. Her caution's come back to bite her, looks like. She's ravenous.

"Just down to the kitchens and right back here," she tells herself, stuffing her feet into her slippers. She's not supposed to leave her room after bedtime for anything except what Papa delicately refers to as a call of nature. "Quick as a flash! I'll get a snack and no one will know and it'll be fine."

She steals to her door and leans into it, hitching her weight under the knob and pushing so it won't squeak. The hallway's dark save for the aurora's shivery heavenlight drawing patterns on the walls and carpets. She steps out, closes her door behind her, and sets off at near a run, skidding once or twice where the floors stretch out bare.

The kitchens are deserted, countertops laden with rows and rows of trays of pastries and tarts, some still steaming. She's just missed the night cooks, then, and with no one to avoid she takes her time meandering from counter to counter, sniffing the pastries, touching her fingertip—and her tongue, after—delicately to frosting and glaze alike. Papa's always telling her that a princess gives every perspective equal opportunity. Flavors are a kind of perspective!

There's one tray better than every other in the kitchens by virtue of the fact that it's heaped with chocolate buns. Anna wants the whole tray but filches just a single bun, so maybe its absence won't be noticed and whoever baked it won't get in trouble. She wraps it in wax paper and tucks it into the sleeve of her nightdress just to be safe, then starts back upstairs to her room. She takes a different route this time, padding past still suits of armor and the portraits that keep her company most days, too hard to discern for the dark. The floorboards whisper. She turns a corner and grins: she's almost there and the bun smells so good and—

And Elsa's door is open.

Well, not _open_-open—it's barely open, like, ajar? Orange candlelight seeps between the door and the jamb, flickering. All the breath leaves Anna in a rush. Her knees go to water and she stumbles over her own feet, staggers, catches herself and still almost drops the bun, grasping after it with nerveless fingers. Probably she squashes it some. Mouth agape, her heart knocking up into her neck, she stares at the door, expecting it to click closed again at any moment.

It doesn't.

Outside dinner and with luck, Elsa's a shadow disappearing down a hallway or a bright blue eye between bookshelves: there and gone, almost like magic. Otherwise she's a disembodied voice, an immobile knob, a lock turned tight: she's the door, this door, shut and barred. Anna swallows and whispers, "Elsa?" She lines herself up with the frail orange gap to peek cautiously inside.

The fat tallow candle in the sconce by the door shows her everything. There's Elsa's bed, tidy, untouched. The sheets are turned down but no one's in them. Anna blinks at that, frowns, nudges the door open a little more. The hinges squeak. Anna can't stop her eyes from going everywhere—she's never seen this room for more than a second or two and Elsa's dresser's just like hers except it's a pretty shade of periwinkle, the pulls done up in silver. (Anna's are brass.) The floor's clear of clothes—another difference—but the vanity beneath the mirror's ringed with trinkets, and Anna steps toward that because that's not different, no. Not different at all.

After Papa came back from visiting his sister's kingdom last year, he gifted to Anna a lilac lacquered treasurebox bearing a golden sunburst on the lid. Its twin sits polished and perfect beside Elsa's comb. Anna flips it open to see if Elsa's still got any chocolates left inside. No: but she kept the wrappers, same as Anna, and she folded them too into small bright foil squares. Anna touches the one on top and something in her twinges, deep down, something raw and wounded. Her eyes prickle. When she and Elsa were little, like, _really _little, they'd steal candies from the dishes in the dignitary study and go hide in a closet amongst the brooms and mops, and there in the musty darkness they'd unwrap the candies for each other. "Say _aaah_," Elsa would whisper, and Anna would open her mouth because Elsa wasn't ever mean, no! She always gave Anna the strawberry toffees and the chocolate-covered cherries but never the hard little lemon sweets, the ones that smelled so nice but tasted so bad.

"Anna," Elsa says now, and Anna spins around, eyes wet, palms up.

"I'm sorry," she says, "I am, Elsa, I'm so, so sor—" but Elsa's not standing behind her. Elsa's draped over the desk in the bedroom corner, her head pillowed on scattered parchment, her face slack and her lips parted. She's sleeping. A pen lists between her blotchy fingers like a drunken soldier, blotting ink. As Anna watches, Elsa lets out a slow, shuddery breath, hunches her shoulders, twitches. Her eyes roll beneath their lids.

"Anna," she says again, only it's more like a sob.

Anna presses her hands over her mouth. Her eyes are still leaking, tears dribbling down her dumb cheeks, dripping off her chin. The bitter twist of lemon rolls on her tongue and she's sunk half in the memory of the closet candies, hearing the foil crinkle, smelling the dust, feeling the broom bristles brush the backs of her legs. The other half of her brain is frozen in a rictus of horrified fascination. She takes one step toward Elsa—and another, and one more, until she's leaning over her sister, looking at her up close for the first time in years.

The Elsa who runs through the dim halls of Anna's childhood recollection laughs a lot and smiles more. Her hands are always squeezing and she's a swoop of silver-blonde hair leaning down to say, "Let's go build a snowman!" This Elsa, though, has her elbows thrown out haphazard and her braid scattered down her shoulder, and her throat's a hoarse kettle of clinky choking sounds. She's crying. Anna only remembers Elsa ever crying once before when they were small: remembers hands on her face, cold hands, and Elsa's voice and tears colder still. She just doesn't remember why.

She doesn't know why now either, but it's wrong, it's awful. Elsa's shoulders hitch and something in Anna's head goes _pop_, the same way it did when she woke up a while ago and stretched in bed. Elsa doesn't like being touched, but…

Anna reaches out her hand and dabs with hesitant fingers at the wet on Elsa's cheeks. It's like a nip from a leaning candle, touching Elsa: she's so cold it almost hurts, and Anna hisses through her teeth and turns to scowl at the fireplace. If there was ever a fire in it in the night it's dead now, and maybe the flue's faulty because there's a lattice of fine white frost on the kindling.

Anna tiptoes over to the fireplace. She paws through the pile of wood next to it. When she finds a few new pieces of good dry kindling, she stuffs them into the ash and goes to get the candle from the sconce by the door. With the candle she lights up the kindling one piece at a time, and she blows on the small, flickering flames until their little red tongues start lapping over the larger logs. "Hurry," she whispers, "hurry up, c'mon."

Yanking the quilt off Elsa's bed next, Anna creeps back to her sister. Elsa's still crying, puddling and blotching the ink on the parchment beneath her cheek. Anna, lip bitten all the while, drapes the quilt carefully, carefully over Elsa and lets the rest of it fall down to the floor over the back of her chair. She tucks it in at Elsa's shoulders and across the tops of her arms. Elsa stirs faintly for that, sobbing, "Anna, no, Anna, I'm sorry," and the wet on her cheeks glows slick, stark yellow in the candlelight. She looks _guilty_, looks guilty like she did when they were so, so small and she was supposed to be watching Anna and Anna burned her fingers on a candle trying to put the wax in her mouth. Papa yelled and yelled even though the damage turned out to be just a couple blisters.

Anna jerks her hands back, aching inside, jaw clenched tight, trying not to cry too.

"Elsa, sssh," she answers, "no, no no, it's okay, you're fine, I'm not mad." Waking up Elsa's going to get her sent away, she knows, but she'd rather that than let Elsa think she's done something wrong, even if it's in dreams. The quilt slips on Elsa's shoulder and Anna seizes it without thinking, hitches it up: decides delicacy is done and leans over to wipe Elsa's face. The tears are cold on her thumb. Elsa's mouth trembles open and she makes to sob again, and Anna strokes her face, cups it clumsily, says, "I'm here, Elsa, right here, ssssh."

Under her hand Elsa quivers. Her eyelids flutter and there are tears in her lashes, tiny silver beads, and Anna holds her breath and waits for Elsa to open her eyes and see her. Only Elsa doesn't. After an ageless pause she rolls her cheek into Anna's palm, like she's shy about it. Anna feels the breath run out of her sister in a slow, seeping sigh. The quiver falters. Downstairs the clock chimes half past three, and a while after that—Anna's not sure how long—Elsa's shoulders are rising and falling under the quilt in easy, even sweeps. Anna takes her hand away to look. Elsa's stopped crying.

The heavy semicircles of strain smudged beneath her eyes are like bruises, though. People are supposed to look peaceful sleeping, or silly—as a much younger child Anna crept into bed with her parents enough to catch Papa drooling into his mustache or Mama snoring, making little _nyeep _noises deep in her nose. Elsa has the worn, weary face of someone who's been struggling through deep snow too long, pushing past the big, big drifts and sinking down to the knees every time despite it. She doesn't look silly, or peaceful. She looks used up.

Wood pops in the fireplace. Looking down at Elsa, Anna maps out her sister's face. There are lines on it and that's scary, Elsa's only thirteen, but there are freckles too. Those are nicer. Anna has lots of freckles herself. More always come out every summer. Mama says it's because of the sun. Elsa doesn't have nearly so many and they're pale, hard to see—like stars on her skin, gleaming when the candlelight finds them. Before she can talk herself out of it or fret too much, Anna leans down and kisses Elsa's nose. That's where the freckles cluster. That's where they're brightest, right on the bridge.

"Sleep tight, Elsa," she whispers. Her stomach grumbles and she tenses but there's no need, Elsa's past hearing her. So she adds, "I love you so much and I miss you more, I really do," and then she's fumbling the chocolate bun out of her sleeve because Elsa always gave her the good candies, the best ones, the sweet ones, and Anna never got to return the favor. She leaves the bun on a stack of parchment. Then she skitters to the door and lets herself out and closes it behind her, and goes back to bed, and dreams of frost on firewood and shiny foil wrappers.

—

The next morning at breakfast Elsa comes in a little late. There's a dark brown smear between her nose and upper lip, like one side of a mustache. It crinkles when she looks at Anna across the table. But Elsa doesn't say anything about the bun or Anna being in her room, she doesn't act funny at all. Papa starts talking about trade agreements eventually and Anna eats two huge bowls of porridge, heaped as high as they'll go. The sun pours in great golden slats through the windows.

As they're getting up to leave the dining room, though, Elsa drops her napkin and says to Anna, hurrying by, "Oh—oh no, would you mind getting that? I'm sorry, my tutor's waiting—"

"Go, go! It's fine!" But Elsa didn't stay to hear. She's gone already, a flurry of cloak and fading footsteps. Busy. Always busy. Anna sighs and snatches up the napkin. It crackles under her fingers and she stops, mouth open, Mama and Papa four paces ahead, five, six, out the door and down the hall. Away.

Anna unwraps the napkin. Inside there's a single candy. The sun flashes on the foil and Anna peels it open, and the little lump inside's bright pink. Strawberry toffee.

"Say _aaah_," Elsa whispers from the doorway. She's wringing her hands, her soft leather gloves rustling and squeaking, and her face with its lines and freckles and shadows is almost the face Anna remembers from the broom closet years ago, because now Elsa's smiling.

"_Aaah_," Anna says.

The toffee's better than chocolate.


End file.
